When Harrison and I first started Pass it to Bulis, the “PITB is famous” tag was a way to joke about how small-time we were by celebrating even the tiniest mention of the blog in the mainstream media. It was astonishing to us when our silliness — scrabble challenges and dumb questions on HNIC After Hours — actually received coverage in the real world.

Now that we occupy the hazy borderlands between mainstream and alternative media, it’s less surprising to see our blog mentioned elsewhere, so that saying “PITB is famous” no longer seems tongue-in-cheek, but instead looks like we’re tooting our own horn. If our horns are to be tooted, we prefer that other people toot them without prompting from us.

Still, there’s one place where we still don’t expect to get our horns tooted: in the mouths of the players. Okay, that came out wrong…

On Tuesday’s game between the Canucks and the Devils at Rogers Arena, the big screen at centre ice showed a short video during one of the TV timeouts where Kevin Bieksa reminisced about his first NHL goal. Unexpectedly, that led to a mention of your favourite Bulis-themed Canucks blog.

Well, it took two and a half years, but PITB has finally broken through in Russia. It may be time to launch our KHL site, “Pass it to Borscht”.

There is, however, a downside to our international renown: Jan Bulis is in Russia. And now he knows about us.

On Saturday, PITB’s patron saint led Traktor Chelyabinsk to a 4-1 win over Dynamo Moscow, picking up 2 goals and an assist in the victory, and in the postgame presser, Semyon Galkevich of Sovetsky Sport asked the KHL star if he was aware of this blog. Puck Daddy’s Dmitri Chesnokov was kind enough to warn us, as well as give us a real translation of the pertinent section.

The Shane Doan saga is a neverending story. Even the report that he’s signed isn’t the end of it.

Back on Monday, we waded into the epic of Shane Doan, explaining that, by all accounts, the winger wanted to remain in Phoenix and was merely waiting for Greg Jamison to finalize a deal to keep the Coyotes afloat so that he could.

Now we have another account to add to the pile, and it comes from Doan himself. On Thursday, Doan appeared on Phoenix’s XTRA 910 radio and said pretty much what we expected: Greg Jamison has survived his trip to the Central Bureaucracy, and the moment he is announced as owner, an extension with Doan will be announced as well.

Back in late January, we took up the cause of finding a sponsor for the Vancouver Wellwoods, PITB’s official women’s road hockey team. For years, the Wellwoods had been playing in baby blue t-shirts with iron-on decals, but they had decided it was time for them to graduate to snazzier duds. They needed jerseys, and since jerseys cost money, they needed a sponsor willing to pony up the scratch.

Thanks entirely to our ability to crowdsource, the Wellwoods were able to find not one, but two sponsors: BC Diabetes, “dedicated to providing excellence in diabetes care, research and education to all British Columbians,” and Ken Johnson, a kind young man that just wanted somebody to love.

Kevin Bieksa and Zack Kassian were Saturday night’s guests on After Hours, the interview segment of CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada telecast that, under Scott Oake’s watchful eye, touches briefly on hockey then hastily devolves into shenanigans. In Bieksa’s case, between joining Twitter, the Bieksa family golf tournament, milk hot dogs, “Angry Bieksa”, and the glove-throwing incident, that meant there was a lot of ground to cover. Seriously, Scott Oake could have just prepared for this interview by clicking the “Bieksa” tag on Pass it to Bulis.

Heck, he might have, since we got a whole lot of love during the segment. At 13:50 of the clip, the topic turned to Bieksa’s Twitter account and the controversy over who deserves credit for convincing him to sign up for it. Was it Ryan Kesler, who no doubt has the inside track here, or was PITB’s highly-persuasive and tightly-run “Twitter Needs Juice” campaign? Oake took the opportunity to do some serious investigative journalism on the matter.

Sadly, Bieksa dismissed our influence. “I don’t succumb to peer pressure,” he said. “It wasn’t this Bulis guy. It was Kes that got me.” Of course, then he claims that Kesler “got” him by promising fans the account would tweet once it had 10,000 followers. So, we’re considered peer pressure, but 10,000 expectant fans isn’t? Clearly, we have underestimated our power. Let it be known that Kevin Bieksa finds us threatening.

At the beginning of the month, I wrote a post regarding the source of the complaints over Cody Hodgson’s ice time. I advanced the theory that the source may well be Ritch Winter, Hodgson’s agent who may have spoken to Tony Gallagher, who then ran with the comments on the radio and in The Province. It was speculative, certainly, but I felt there was enough circumstantial evidence to ask the question.

What I didn’t expect was for Ritch Winter himself to write a 6400 word blog post a month later in response.

Mr. Winter did not take kindly to my conjecture and used it as a springboard for discussing the issues with hockey journalism as a whole. In the process, he touched on Ayn Rand, Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, President Obama, the Tea Party, and Moneyball. It’s a long read, but an interesting one.

To be honest, he makes a very good point about me and the article I wrote. Unfortunately, he then proceeds to miss that point.

On Monday, to our great amusement, members of the Boston media stumbled across the I Watched This Game recap of the Bruins/Canucks game and, unfamiliar with the way we do things, made the mistake of taking the writing completely seriously. The result was hilarious, as both a Boston sportswriter and two Boston sports radio hosts ripped us for points that, clearly, they did not get.

Here’s Ryan “Astro Boy” Kesler on After Hours. As usual, the segment’s a must-watch, and you have to admire Scott Oake’s skill as an interviewer to make it so. Kesler’s not an easy interview. He’s a surly guy that punches questions, and ends sentences abruptly. There’s simply no avoiding dead air when he’s the guest. [...]

As though he weren’t already doing enough to make himself eminently desirable to other organizations, here’s Cory Schneider on After Hours, proving he’s a downright fabulous interview to boot. Turns out he’s as great in front of the camera as he is in front of the net. He’s open, he’s honest, and he’s funny. For [...]

How did he get a shirt? We don’t even have one yet. Ladies and gentlemen, the Tanner Glass Scrabble challenge is officially a go. If you’ll recall, back in November, we issued an open challenge to the Canucks’ grinder, calling him out and questioning his Scrabbling abilities (which, rumour has it, are questionable). Two weeks [...]

The Vancouver Wellwoods, PITB’s adopted women’s road hockey team. In case you live in a cave (or another country), you probably already knew that last weekend was the 1st anniversary of the 2010 Winter Olympics, that awesome party we hosted last year. To celebrate and relive the fever of those awesome two weeks, Vancouver residents [...]

In case you’re new to PITB, let us catch you up to speed. Some time ago, I heard a Tanner Glass interview on the Team 1040 and learned that he loves him some Scrabble. A massive Scrabble fan myself, I couldn’t help but issue an open challenge to the Canucks winger. Some time after that, [...]

In case you missed it, here’s the Subway Bio from tonight’s Hockey Night in Canada telecast, which focused on Tanner Glass and PITB’s Scrabble challenge. Very cool. If you’re still in the dark about this whole thing, here’s the summary: we issued an open challenge to play a game of Scrabble with Tanner Glass. One [...]

Up until today, you might have been forgiven for not knowing that Tanner Glass had agreed to play Scrabble with PITB. The challenge had made its way around the Twitterverse and the Blogosphere, but it hadn’t yet escaped to a larger audience. If you weren’t online, you probably wouldn’t have known. But now, the mainstream [...]

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The Canucks season is over and all that's left is to ponder what might have been. What if Willie Desjardins had given the Sedins more ice time earlier in the season? What if Eddie Lack had been brought in for Game 6? What if Desjardins' counter-intuitive lineup decisions had paid off? […]

The Canucks are down 2-1 to the Flames in the playoffs, which means it's time for everyone to start second-guessing Willie Desjardins. The number one topic is his use of the Sedins, who are averaging less ice time than they had in the regular season, apparently to keep them "fresh". […]

The Canucks are back in the playoffs and facing an old rival in the Calgary Flames. This year, the playoffs feel wide open, with no prohibitive favourite to win the Stanley Cup, giving Canucks fans hope that they can defy the odds and go on a long playoff run. […]

The Canucks defeated the Kings in a crucial game on Monday night, potentially leaving the defending Stanley Cup Champions outside of the playoffs. It was close and hard-fought, proving that the Canucks can compete with the Kings if they do end up meeting in the first round. […]